Please maintain a neutral point of view. Also, be careful about labeling something a "mistake" just because you don't like it. Using "Gartenzaun" to mean "anscheinend" is a mistake; using "scheinbar" to mean "anscheinend" is not. Hundreds of thousands of native speakers do just that every single day, so it's clearly an integral part of the language. It's a different register, that much is for sure, and you probably won't encounter it in formal writing. But then say just that. "Mistake" is a misnomer; informal ≠ ungrammatical, and colloquial ≠ wrong.
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RegDwightNov 28 '11 at 21:40

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@RegDwight: Thousands of native speakers say "wegen dem" or "einzigsten". That does not make it correct. It is wrong. It doesn't matter how many people do it wrong. And before the last Duden edition, there was always a warning not to confuse "anscheinend" and "scheinbar". It is a mistake. A big one. Because they mean two totally different things.
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John SmithersNov 28 '11 at 21:45

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My problem with people saying "scheinbar" when they really mean "anscheinend" is that I get the feeling, that they want to impress but in reality use the wrong word. However I guess I have to live with the fact that the meaning of the two words gets kinda blurry; IMO thats kind of sad if you had two words with distinct meanings.
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0x6d64Nov 28 '11 at 23:31

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I agree with @JohnSmithers. Just because everybody uses a word or phrase doesn't make it correct. If that were the case, our language would degenerate to a mess of unstructured utterances in the shortest amount of time.
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musiKkNov 29 '11 at 8:33

Still, if you value the subtle differences, it's good to know them. "Anscheinend" does not make a statement as to the veracity of the appearance, while "scheinbar" does. A synonym for "anscheinend" is "augenscheinlich" (with maybe a hint of a doubt in it).

There are also some more subtly different variations,
"offenbar" and "offensichtlich": The appearance is obviously true.